I received several VFT a few days ago that I planted in 50/50 coco coir and 16 mesh silica sand with about 1/2 inch of LFSM on top. The coco coir was rinsed several times in distilled water until the TDS was below 30. I have them under GlowPanel 45s about 14 inches above for 16 hours a day. I noticed several of the traps are turning brown on the tips(note sure what the scientific name is). The traps I've had for over a month aren't having this problem, they're doing great. Could it just be stress from being shipped and repotted or something else?

cnf276 wrote:The coco coir was rinsed several times in distilled water until the TDS was below 30

That won't work. The coco coir must be soaked for at least 8-10 hours between each draining, and must be soaked in that way for at least 6-8 times before almost all the soluble material is redissolved and removed. The drained water should be discarded. The TDS reading is most reliable when one pours just enough water into the coir to reach the top of the coir, without much excess water sitting on top of the coir.

Rinsing doesn't work because even though after several rinses a low TDS reading might result, there is still a lot of undissolved material in the coir that longer soaking will dissolve and disperse. The water in the coir, if you are using it as a planting medium after just several rinses, may be over 1000 TDS. Even at several hundred TDS, it will damage the plants, give a Flytrap salt burn that will cause the traps to become insensitive, and begin to progressively stunt both the rate of growth and the size of the emerging leaves and traps, until the plant almost stops growing at all, and then (often) dies. Even if one transplants a Venus Flytrap at that stage, the mineral salts are already inside the tissue of the plant affecting and poisoning it, and the Venus Flytrap is obliged to try to outgrow the damage as it sequesters the mineral salts into the existing leaves, which die sooner than they normally would. Sometimes a Venus Flytrap is successful in outgrowing such salt damage. By "salt" I don't mean table salt of course, but any of a large number of soluble mineral salts.

GlowPanel 45 is 28w. The lumen rating isn't listed. I don't think lumens are used to determine how affective LEDs are. Since they're low power but very focused. The GlowPanel 45 is suppose to replace a 250w MH/HPS system which is quite a bit of power. I was using a T5 2' 2 bulb unit for my plants and they did good but I had to have them very close to the light. I've had the GlowPanel 45 for a couple weeks now and the plants seem to be growing faster.

Here is a link to a very good discussion about LEDs. GlowPanel 45 is one of the LED's that were tested and the reason I decided to buy them.

cnf276 wrote: I'm going to replant them all tomorrow in a peat/silica mix hopefully it's not too late!

They'll probably be fine, after only a few days in the coir. I hate to sound so negative about coir because I personally like it very much and use more coir than sphagnum peat moss now for my own plants. Coir (coconut husk pith) is an excellent substitute for or alternative to sphagnum peat moss that in my own tests has produced growth (especially root growth) superior to that which develops in sphagnum peat mixes.

However, the big caveat is that coir, regardless of any claims to the contrary, needs some rather tedious and time consuming preparation before it can be used. But that just takes one's own time and effort and therefore costs nothing, and the coir itself is usually very reasonably priced, although shipping expenses can be relatively high because of weight. But coir in a well-balanced growing mix works great, so long as it is thoroughly desalinated first.

The reason I decided to use coir was your post on testing it. I bought a condensed brick of it from my local hydroponics store and ran distilled water through it about 5 times until the PPM was below 30. I was just unaware of the undissolved material being an issue. I bought Botonicare Cocogro which the hydroponics guy said there is nothing added to it. Here is a link to it: